Slightly different but still the same

Rating: 7/10 (2 February 2006)

Michael Bay's latest offering of summer blockbuster action is 'The Island', a tale of clones being bred and used as insurance policies; they will be harvested if their 'sponsor' should need replacement organs. To ensure the clones are kept in tip-top condition, their lives are carefully managed and almost pre-programmed to believe that they will one day win the lottery and be chosen to go to paradise – the eponymous island. In fact all they 'win' is a trip to the operating theatre. When Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two-Delta (Scarlett Johansson) discover the truth they escape and go on the run to start a new life, and find their 'sponsors'.
The Island is most definitely, to paraphrase a popular cliché, a film of two halves. Michael Bay, in his first major picture without the guiding hand of Jerry Bruckheimer, appears to be suffering from an identity crisis. To combat this he attempts to develop his own new identity, and thus the first half of the film seems to be almost a theological essay on the ethics of cloning. However, Bay inevitably cannot rein in his natural instinct to blow things up, and thus the second half of the film the whole inconvenient ethics dilemma falls by the wayside as the police and special forces pursue the two escaped clones across the country in a variety of chase scenes.
The main problem for 'The Island' is that it cannot make up its' mind what it wants to be. Does Michael Bay want to make a serious film to debate the issues of cloning or does he want to stick to what he knows best? As a result of this indecisiveness, the film flows like two halves clumsily meshed together.
However, if you can just sit back and try to get past the rather radical change in gear (and almost direction) then there is some fun to be had in the second half of the film. Few people do chase sequences like Michael Bay, and his first outing without Bruckheimer shows that he has just as much talent as his former collaborator. The highway chase involving flying motorbikes and 18-wheelers is real adrenaline-fuelled excitement. There are also numerous fish out of water gags as Lincoln and Jordan emerge from their sheltered lives into the real world, and find everything completely unfathomable (although they do pick things up very quickly!).
McGregor works hard here playing a dual role of clone Lincoln Six-Echo and his sponsor Tom Lincoln – the latter allowing him to use his natural Scottish accent. Johansson however does little more than play the textbook cute and smart blonde with no real depth to her character performance. Sean Bean, in another interesting change of pace, does not ham it up as the evil doctor, and instead gives a restrained, ambiguous performance – indicating that Bay is not prepared to comment too strongly on the ethics dilemma portrayed here. Steve Buscemi however is totally miscast as Lincoln's friend who helps them escape – even playing a nice guy he comes across as creepy, with a slight weasel-like quality. But then, he does that so well that his attempt at a change is admirable. Ethan Phillips provides a semblance of 'comic relief' while Djimon Hounsou plays the standard muscle-for-hire from the textbook.
Overall, as summer blockbusters go, this serves as reasonable entertainment – for the second hour at least. The first hour remains a light essay that doesn't want to get its hands dirty by digging too deep into the ethical dilemma of cloning. But perhaps this is just as well, as Bay's typical target audience don't want to think too much. It seems that he is caught between two directions – dumb down too much, or not quite dumbed down enough. But if you can disengage the brain, 'The Island' will prove reasonably diverting for a couple of hours, but will be forgotten not long after.